Coller on heads?

Do you perfer a coller-less head for tying?I spend a lot of time looking at your jigs and it drives me to try to get better...but I'm having a few problems. The way my chenille sits..or lays on the jig...some of it is me, some is the coller with the barb (which I clip off) but that transition to the hook shank I think is whats giving me my problem the elevation change. The coller is in my mold bought before I really started trying to tie the style most here do...i.e. flash, some type of hackle or marabou, and diffrent chenille...the other problem is simular to most of the beginners here hiding the thread to give a clean fishished look. I think that is why I see a lot of coller-less jig heads on ya'lls jigs... One more thing..if your using a collered head...are you pulling the stem of the feather all the way up the coller (to the head) to secure? I'm trying to tie as many as I can right now...our Crappie bite is ON right now...It's rained the last two weekends in a row and I work out of town...it is killing me maybe this weekend coming I can report that I caught fish on my stuff LOL. By the way I made my own pop mold poured my own soft plastics and followed the tread on this site to make my own Hal or Jiffy type jigs and they look pretty clean...but not perfect! thanks liftbite

When you cut the barb off leave a little nub, you can hide it with kip, maribou, hackle etc. and use it as the point where you tie your chenille in. It will help keep your thread from slipping off the collar. Tying off cleanly at the head takes practice and you'll get it looking better as you tie more.

If the collar bothers you use a pair of nips and cut it off. I used to do that with all of mine but the arthritis started bothering me bad after doing a few hundred heads so I bought the collar less mold. I like having both.

I just take a small pair of side cutters and cut gently right behind the head then go sideways on the collar and trim it off. I am no ti,er by any stretch of the imagination just do a few for myself and found that works best for me and still have jigs for plastics.

I wrote a tutorial on how to tie on collared jigs here:

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/jig-t...ared-jigs.html

The idea is to build up the area around the hook shank until it is approximately the same level as the collar. If the difference is too great even after you tie in the tail, you can tie in the central threads on the chenille on the collar, then start wrapping the fuzzy part behind the collar going toward the point. Wrap your thread back to the end of the body, then forward to the head. Then wrap the chenille back to the had and tie off.

Then you won't have a problem with lumpy bodies.

The collar Jigs are for holding soft baits on them. If you are going to get jigs for tying I would use collarless. You will have a much more even bass.

I normally use collarless jigs for tying, however when tying with mylar tubing I will leave the collar on them.

When I started tying one of my first molds was a mold with a collar. At that time most of what you could get was collared. Then I found Do-It molds and they had collarless. So I learned to tie with both. Today I tie 98% of my jigs on no collar blanks.Shoemoo's tutorials will help you just be careful and watch your proportion. Jig Tiers are Artist and so it is really up to you to to do what YOU want to have them come out looking like. I don't care what mine look like a lot of time What I care more about is will they catch fish. If they look great and catch fish it is a added bonus. Remember for most of us this is a Hobby and is for having fun.

Redman

I don't tie chenille on a collar ever as I just personally don't like it. I only use a collar on thread neck hair jigs!

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